Tag Archives: taxpayers

Working Toward Sustainable Health Care System For Ontarians

During meetings, doorknocking and attending community events, I find the provision of health care remains the number one issue for Ontario taxpayers. Access to publicly funded health care is fundamental to our shared understanding of what it means to be an Ontarian and a Canadian. However, there are threats to the long-term sustainability of our system – not the least of which includes an increasingly aging population with complex needs.

The future of the health care system we cherish and expect is at risk. To that end, Ontario’s Health Minister Christine Elliott attended AMO – Association Municipalities of Ontario – to present our plan to build a modern, connected and sustainable public health care system. Our system is in need of transformational change. With the creation of Ontario Health, the province’s new central health agency, and the work toward establishing the first wave of local Ontario Health Teams, the goal is to build a connected, integrated, coordinated system of care — centered on the patient.

To ensure patient-centered care, health teams will be based on and driven by local communities. We must also consider how best to deliver public health, a central component of community health care, in a way that is resilient, efficient, nimble, and modern. Municipalities stress the need to consult more broadly. That is why Premier Ford made a commitment to pause any changes to the funding for 2019. Doing so will offer municipalities the time needed to find ways to support the shared objective for a more sustainable public health care system.

Starting January 1, 2020, all municipalities will transition to a 70-30 cost sharing funding model – 70 province and 30 municipality. I sit on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. In 2017, Ontario’s Auditor General reported that public health units are poorly coordinated and duplicative. Since 2014, one-third of public health units have undertaken research on a number of common topics – like sugar-sweetened beverages, energy drinks, e-cigarettes and alcohol. We question the need to invest taxpayer dollars to produce multiple reports on the same topics. People need to know that the services offered by their public health unit are available to them, no matter where they live in the province.

Currently, there is inconsistency across Ontario in the services available. Something has to be done.

The status quo is not an option. That is why our government will launch renewed consultation with municipalities and other partners in public health. The next phase of engagement will be open and transparent, anchored by the release of a discussion paper. Among other aspects of the new regional entities, this paper will outline our proposals for boundaries for the new regional public health entities.

Ontario will not be reducing funding to land ambulance services.

In fact, municipalities will receive on average nearly four per cent more in funding for the 2019 calendar year, and can expect continued growth for 2020. Together, we are building a modern, sustainable and integrated health care system that starts and ends with the patient. Modernizing our public health sector and our emergency health services are an important part to the plan. Because of the important work being done today, people in Ontario can rest assured that there will be a sustainable health care system for them when and where they need it. For the Silo, Toby Barrett MPP Haldimand-Norfolk.

Contraband Tobacco solution requires more than Federal legislation ‘tinkering’

Illegal Cigarettes Stashed

SOLVING ILLICIT TOBACCCO  A National Strategy  There is no debate that the global trade in contraband tobacco has far-reaching implications for society. Too much evidence exists today to deny that the black market in tobacco draws in the involvement of a host of problems for public safety and national security.  Complicating the picture is the inevitable Canadian debate relative to which level of government has control over what activities and in so doing responsibility for quelling the illicit tobacco industry falls between the cracks.

The reality of the debate is much more visceral when viewed through the lenses of aboriginal rights and commercial responsibilities. Competing “constituencies” in the debate continue to pursue support by staking out scientific, social and moral positions on the smuggling and selling of untaxed and unregulated tobacco products.  The Ontario Convenience Store Association points fingers at the Canadian First Nations as the source of contraband tobacco off reserve.  Law Enforcement warns of the role of Organized Crime – up to 175 gangs and the Italian Mafioso too!  Band leaders on reserve say that it is their right to deal in tobacco all they want so long as it helps the economic prosperity of the community.  Ontario farmers blame the McGuinty Liberal Government for “ripping them off” for 69 cents for the tobacco pounds they agreed not to grow pursuant to the Tobacco Transition Program of 2008.  All in all, things are a mess!

The provisions of Bill C10, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in contraband tobacco), which was sent to the Senate for “sober second thought” has passed Third Reading and awaits proclamation. The Bill will pass but it will leave a sour taste in the mouths of some of the Bill’s “constituencies”, including First Nations. During the Senate “consultation” process, several First Nations leaders decried the flawed consultation process with Canada’s First Nations.

Despite the progress against contraband tobacco with Bill C-10 from a law enforcement point of view, many of the conditions that support the illicit trade in tobacco remain. Save for high profile busts like the “Sweet Dreams” takedown last spring in Montreal that netted the Sicilian Mafia connection, the slow burn of the illicit tobacco trade has caused convenience store closures, stripped billions of dollars from federal and provincial tax coffers, made criminals out of law abiding farmers, and has opened new routes to marketing cigarettes to children on school grounds.

 

A National Approach

The solution to the many problems associated with contraband tobacco require more than just tinkering with federal legislation yet again. The complexities of the issue require a complete re-thinking of the problem of illicit tobacco and how best to deal with it.

A truly novel and potentially much more effective way of dealing with all tobacco regulation in Canada would be to appoint a National Tobacco Ombudsman (NTO) with sufficient investigative and search and seizure powers to greatly reduce or even eliminate the prevalence of illicit tobacco in Canada. To avoid any constitutional confusion, the NTO would be specifically national in scope but multi-jurisdictional in its powers and therefore a uniquely derived capability that can cross federal/provincial/First Nations lines to arrive at practical solutions.

 

Tobacco and Competing Constituencies

When it comes to a serious attempt to address the problems associated with the illicit tobacco trade in Canada, the solution needs to focus on four areas that need fixing. All four need to be dealt with rationally and objectively and potentially all by a properly selected and resourced NTO.

  • Law Enforcement

 

To date in Canada the RCMP has been afforded the mandate and financial resources to combat contraband tobacco. Unfortunately, the Mounties have been sorely inadequate to the task.  Despite RCMP press releases that take credit for illicit tobacco busts, two realities remain.  First, most of the Mounties believe that stopping the flow of contraband tobacco is an insult to their mandate as Canada’s federal police force.   Instead of trying to convince the RCMP that this is important work for them to pursue, it would be better to shift law enforcement to local and provincial police forces and provide them with the manpower and financial resources they need to investigate and pursue offenders.

Besides pursuing organized crime groups and chasing terrorism-related financial networks, there are many other, less sexy law enforcement activities that need to be attended to in order to fully address the contraband problem. For one example, enforcing the regulations that control the production and distribution of tobacco are provincial matters but require the monitoring and investigative expertise that comes with experienced and trained law enforcement personnel.

A NTO should be given the mandate to define the roles and resources of local and provincial police forces to support the enforcement of tobacco growing and distribution legislation and regulations at both the provincial and federal levels. Moreover, should the provisions of Bill C-10 (or something like it) come into effect, sworn peace officers from local and provincial forces will need to be coordinated in training and procedure.

 

  • First Nations – Rights and Fairness

A First Nations Chief stated that Bill C-10 effectively allows the Canadian Government to enter the 6 Nations of the Grand River or Tyendinaga, both in Ontario, with no-knock raids, flash bangs, police dogs and RCMP in riot gear if we have in our possession unstamped tobacco products.  In both the Akwesasne and Kahnawake reserves in Quebec there are no less than 50 illicit cigarette factories.  First Nations here have long served notice to both legislative authorities and law enforcement that they are most unwelcome.  Both of these reserves continue to produce high volumes of contraband tobacco that continue to be distributed across Canada.

 

  • Growers – the 69 cent solution

 

Farmers in Southern Ontario believe fervently that they have been “screwed” by the Ontario Government. This screwing took place when Premiere McGuinty reneged on a deal, as part of the Federal Government’s Tobacco Transition Program of 2008, to pay farmers sixty-nine cents for every pound of tobacco they would not grow in future.  Some of the farmers lost their farms; others found ways to circumvent the deal – take the money from the feds and continue to grow tobacco for sale to the black market.

The NTO would not permit this fiasco to develop. Fairness would have dictated a process for negotiating the buyout such that all parties would be agreeable to the outcome and all parties would respect the terms of activity or payment.  To give the deal teeth, the NTO would have the resources to monitor the results of the agreement, including payments promised and behaviour modified.

 

  • Taxation Rationalization

 

It is widely known that the infamous U.S. mobster, Al Capone, was convicted for tax evasion in order to put him away for life. Present day mobsters are involved in using contraband proceeds to engage in other serious criminal activities such as drug, gun and human trafficking and terrorism funding.

Illegal Cigarette Profits Feed Terrorism

Studies by reputable think tanks such as the US Mackinac Institute have determined that there is a sweet spot in government taxation levels that represents the most effective price deterrent to smoking and the point where tax hikes drive consumers – especially young consumers – to buy contraband cigarettes.

A NTO would have the ability to provide much wisdom and hopefully much influence in advising governments at all levels how to set tax policy and rates within the context of knowledgeable consequences. The other important aspect that would be performed by the NTO is to ensure harmonization across jurisdictions which would eliminate “spatial arbitrage” between jurisdictional lines.

 

Action Required

The concept of a National Tobacco Ombudsman requires immediate discussion and very near term implementation so that tax bases can be restored with money now flowing to the criminal elements in Canada and abroad.

Ombudsmen are about protecting the rights of the public. A NTO with criminal investigative powers led by a credible Ombudsman  would protect the legitimate interests of the First Nations communities, provide law enforcement with the tools to rid our communities of organized crime groups, provide guidelines for the orderly growing of tobacco on or off reserves, and stop the lust for tax grabs at the expense of public safety.  This Ombudsman would be answerable to Parliament and would not be buried in the bureaucracy with hierarchical structures that have been established to protect and avoid issues of significant importance.  Contraband tobacco in Canada continues to be a multi-billion dollar rip off that fuels organized crime and is a significant threat to national security as the illicit trade moves with fluidity across national and international borders.

The establishment of the NTO requires unwavering leadership, transparency and accountability at all levels of government, within commercial activity involving tobacco, and within First Nations’ communities. For the Silo, Edward R. Myers

SupplementalTobacco.org home to tobacco news and information

In England, convenience store owners (called Publicans) are charged and serve jail time for selling illegal cigarettes and tobacco

Holland Marsh Peaker Plant

The Holland Marsh- photo:friendsofthegreenbelt.ca

“The cost of moving gas power plants for political reasons is more than financial. It erodes confidence in our government and our democracy. It leads to cynicism and turns people off politics.It’s a sad day for democracy when jokes are flying around Queen’s Park that the going rate for a Liberal seat is $40 million. Perhaps the Liberal party should repay the $200 plus million that this fiasco will cost taxpayers or ratepayers.” MIKE SCHREINER, GPO LEADER

The government must be held accountable for such a blatant and obvious example of putting partisan political interests ahead of the public’s interests.

Forgotten in all the talk of gas plants in Mississauga and Oakville is that the Holland Marsh Peaker plant proceeded against local opposition in a PC held riding.

York Enery Centre King Township Peaker Generating Station Construction Progress: 2011-04-21 photos: Greg Locke

That plant is located in Ontario’s protected Greenbelt, adjacent to prime farm land and sensitive wetlands. These compelling reasons and local opposition weren’t enough to stop the plant in a PC riding, yet days before an election local opposition was enough to stop a plant in a Liberal held riding.

Does this new gas plant development contradict Ontario’s 2005 Protecting the GreenBelt plan? check the link below

At a minimum the Premier should issue an unambiguous apology to the people of Ontario for the costs to our finances and democracy that have arisen from his government’s mishandling of siting of gas plants in Ontario.”

GreenBelt Plan 2005

Green Party of Ontario
PO Box 1132
Toronto, ON M4Y 2T8
Canada